Gears getting GM is "normal" - Rein

By Tom Bramwell Published 11 February, 2008

Tsunoda just replacing the old one.

Mark Rein says that former EA Chicago man Kudo Tsunoda's installation as general manager for Gears of War "is a normal reorganisation at Microsoft" and that he's looking forward to working with him.

"In practical terms this is a normal reorganisation at Microsoft," Rein told Eurogamer in an email. "They're a huge company with something like 70,000 employees and they re-organise their structure on a fairly regular basis.

"Kudo will be the GM in charge of the studio that oversees MGS/Epic publishing relationship. Our previous GM is moving over to the studio that oversees the Halo franchise where there's more action going on.

"We had dinner with Kudo during DICE [the Las Vegas developer summit] and I think we'll have fun working with him as we've had with all the folks we've worked with at Microsoft over the years," he added.

Tsunoda, whose previous work includes Fight Night Round 3 and Def Jam Icon at the now-defunct EA Chicago, is said to report to Microsoft Games bigwig Don Mattrick and apparently started in his new position last Monday.

Microsoft Game Studios man Shane Kim denied that this should be construed as some kind of confirmation of future Gears of War titles - something that Rein's response also seems to reflect.

Although, as we said before, there will be another Gears of War game. Just because there so obviously will be.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (6) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • DAN.E.B #1 4 years ago

    Who the hell cares!!!!???
    just release the damn game already!!!!!!!!!

  • Lukus #2 4 years ago

    I got an email off Mark Rein once. True story.

  • Xerx3s #3 4 years ago

    "They're a huge company with something like 70,000 employees...

    70 000 eh? Let's say that they all earn a basic absolutely minimum income of 1500 € a month. That's 105 000 000 in salary each month. Tripple that figure to get all the extra expenses. 0_o

    They could buy a small country each month and form their own commonwealth. :D

    Of course that figure is going to be a lot higher because a lot of the peeps are Ir/Ing, management, etc.

  • bioreit #4 4 years ago

    @ Xerx3s

    According to the 10-Q report from MS, the quarterly expenditure ending 30th September 2007 for " General and administrative costs [which] includes payroll, employee benefits, stock-based compensation expense and other headcount-related expenses" was $718 million, so an average of $239 million per month. That does include legal costs of $40 million across the quarter though.

    I could force my way through the reports some more, but it's been a long time since I've had to deal in the turgid language of your average accountant, so I'm not gonna. At least, unless you guys can cobble together the money I used to get paid for transcribing and proof-reading all this crap.

    So let's just round it down to an average of $200 million per month, for wages and usual expenses, eh? :-)

  • MightyMouse #5 4 years ago

    fight night round 3 AND def jam icon? wow.

    nah good luck to him, hope he speeds up the release of gow 2.

  • Xerx3s #6 4 years ago

    Hmmm, yeah I was thinking European wages. Hadn't taken into account that the Americans don't have the same expensive social net that we have.